If you have gone to a coffee shop, restaurant, or bar recently, you might have found yourself leaving a generous—perhaps, more than generous—tip when paying for your food and drinks. The single most common area in which psychology research is being put into practice is tipping in the service industry. Leaving a 15 percent tip used to be the industry standard, but tipping 20 percent or more has now become the norm.
While the pandemic kickstarted this trend (which was justifiable, as service workers faced more risk in serving customers), the trend of increased tipping is sticking around. Here are three psychology-based ways that businesses are tricking customers into tipping more.
1. Seeding the Tip Jar. This is the most prevalent yet old-school tactic for nudging customers to leave a tip with their purchase. Seeding the tip jar is when the barista or bartender places money from the cash register into the tip jar before opening up the doors for business. This tactic is powerful because it relies on the social psychology concept known as social proof. When we are asking ourselves whether we should leave a tip or not, we look for questions in the environment about what other people in the same situation are doing.
Seeding the tip jar works for cash, but what about digital transactions?
2. Setting High Default Tipping Options. Most customer-service businesses have moved away from cash and toward accepting credit cards and digital transactions, sometimes exclusively. In other words, tablets and kiosks have replaced the cash register. When paying for your food or beverage, you will insert your credit card and be prompted to leave a tip. The options to tip usually involve three default choices (15 percent; 20 percent; 25 percent). Consumer research suggests that most people choose the middle option when given three choices, and this particular set of options leads the typical customer to choose 20 percent.
3. Social Pressure. The final trick businesses use to increase tipping involves the concept of social pressure. Often when paying for your food or beverage, the waiter/barista/bartender will turn the tablet around for you to choose a tipping option, while they stand there awkwardly and pretend not to watch you. Or they may stare you down while you make your choice to put more pressure on you.
Latinos employed in the service sector benefit from this practice.
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